Ortigosa de Pestaño

Fifty souls, one church bell, and a wheat field that runs to the edge of the sky. Ortigosa de Pestaño sits 30 km north-west of Segovia at 920 m above sea level, high enough for the air to carry a sharp edge in October yet still too low to escape the meseta’s summer furnace. There is no mirador platform, no craft shop, no ticket booth—just a cluster of adobe walls the colour of dry earth and a silence so complete you can hear your own pulse.

The road in ends here. After the last cattle grid the asphalt narrows to a single lane of packed grit; visitors arrive only when they mean to, not while “passing through”. Mobile signal drops to one intermittent bar, so forget live-streaming the sunset. What you get instead is an hour-to-hour rhythm set by roosters, tractor engines and the wind that arrives every afternoon to comb the barley heads.

A townscape without garnish

Ortigosa was built for work, not for admiration. Houses are rectangular, roofs of curved red tile weighted with stones against the wind. Adobe—straw-mud brick dried in the sun—forms the oldest walls; touch them and a faint dust comes off on your fingers, proof that zero cement was used. Wooden doors hang on forged iron hinges that squeal exactly like their medieval ancestors. Corrugated tin sheds lean against stone threshing floors; someone’s grandfather parked a 1983 Seat 124 under a walnut tree and never moved it again. Nothing is “restored” in the heritage-industry sense; things are simply kept going until they can’t be.

The parish church of San Andrés, fifteenth-century core with a neo-Romanesque tower added in 1922, is the tallest point. Its bell rings the hours mechanically—no resident priest, so recordings do the job. Inside: a single nave, dim light filtering through alabaster panes, the smell of paraffin and old cloth. On the wall hangs a list of men who left for Cuba in 1906; half the surnames match the mailboxes outside.

Walk fifty paces east and the village stops. Wheat takes over, then the horizon. At dawn the fields glow pale bronze; by late morning the sun has bleached all colour out, leaving only heat haze and the distant outline of the Sierra de Guadarrama fifty kilometres away. You are higher than any point in the Cotswolds yet the land feels flatter than Norfolk.

What walking actually looks like

There are no signed PR trails, no wooden fingerposts, no “scenic route” apps that recognise the place. What exists is a lattice of farm tracks—two parallel ruts with a grass mohawk—used by the same Massey Ferguson that seeded them. Pick any track and walk; within twenty minutes Ortigosa shrinks to a smudge of tiles. Distances feel longer than they are because the landscape repeats: wheat, fallow, lone holm oak, stone heap, wheat again. The altitude keeps the air thin; a pace that feels leisurely in Suffolk makes lungs work here.

Spring brings calcareous mud that cakes boots like wet plaster; July hardens the surface into ankle-twisting ridges. After the harvest in August the stubble scratches calves and dust rises with every footfall. Take two litres of water per person; there is no pub, no fountain, no village shop to refill. A circular trudge of 7 km south to the abandoned hamlet of Pestaño Viejo and back takes two hours, longer if you stop to photograph the ruined honey-coloured mill swallowed by nettles.

Night walks reward the stubborn. With no street lighting for ten kilometres, the Milky Way appears in detergent-white clarity. The temperature can fall 18 °C from day-time high; bring a fleece even in July. Shooting stars are common in early August, yet the only soundtrack is still wheat rustling like dry paper.

Eating: plan like an expedition

Ortigosa does not do lunch. The last grocery closed when its proprietor died in 2017; the bar opens only during the August fiestas and even then payment is by cash stuffed into a tobacco tin. Self-catering is compulsory. Stock up in Segovia at the Mercadona by the aqueduct: bread, cheese from Villacastín, tins of Judiones de la Granja, plenty of water. A picnic table stands under the walnut tree by the church; locals regard it as communal, so leave it cleaner than you found it.

If you insist on a hot meal, drive 12 km north to Fuentepelayo where Asador Casa Ramón serves lechazo (milk-fed lamb) for €22 a quarter. They light the wood oven at 11 a.m.; arrive after 3 p.m. and the lamb is gone. Vegetarian? Ask for sopa de ajo—garlic soup with paprika and a poached egg—then add a side of pimientos del Bierzo. Back in Ortigosa before dark, finish with coffee brewed on a camping stove while swallows stitch the sky.

Fiestas: when the population quadruples

For three days around 25 July the village remembers it once had teenagers. Sons and grand-daughters who work in Madrid, Valladolid or Manchester fly home, hang England flags from balconies, and stage a makeshift sound system in the square. The procession starts at the church, proceeds 300 m to the ermita, stops for beer, then returns. At night a rented bullring—portable steel barriers—hosts a novice recortador show; lads in trainers leap aside as half-tonne steers skid in the dust. No one pretends it is art; it is simply what has always happened. Beds fill up in neighbouring villages; if you want in, book a casa rural in Fuentepelayo by Easter or accept a sofa in someone’s cousin’s house.

The rest of the year silence re-imposes itself. Swifts depart mid-September; the grain store by the plaza locks its corrugated door; even the dogs seem to whisper.

Getting here, getting out

No train comes closer than Segovia-Guiomar, 35 km away. From there a taxi costs €50 each way—if the driver knows where Ortigosa is. Car hire from Madrid airport (Avis, €42 a day for a Fiat 500) is cheaper. Take the A-6 to Villacastín, then the CL-601 north-west; after Fuentepelayo watch for a finger-sized sign pointing left across the railway. The last 4 km are tarmac but potholed; after heavy rain the dips fill with water deep enough to drench exhaust pipes. In winter, dawn frost turns the surface into polished marble; chains are overkill, but second gear and no sudden braking are essential.

Petrol? The nearest station is 15 km back towards Segovia and closes at 9 p.m. Fill up before you arrive—Ortigosa will not rescue you with a jerry can.

Leave the same way you came. The village will not mind; it has been forgetting and remembering visitors for centuries, and the wheat will still be waving when you are gone.